


Building A Dam

by LysCat



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Getting to Know Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25321327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LysCat/pseuds/LysCat
Summary: Set after S7E8. Daisy asks Daniel about his past relationships. I figure that the show probably won't discuss much of what happened with Sousa's relationship with Peggy Carter, and this plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Comments: 4
Kudos: 144





	Building A Dam

  
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters familiar to Marvel. Also, I did include a conversation from the first episode this season. It’s written in italic. 

_“Okay, imagine time as a stream…and we’re sticks that were thrown into it. And the water, it moves us, moves around us.”_

_“But it all ends up in the same place,” Coulson broke in._

_“Right, but too many sticks thrown in, it starts build what’s called a dam, and that will change the direction of the water forever and that’s bad. As long as we avoid that, we should be able to just splash around a little bit and we’re all good.”_

The concept had been easy enough when Deke explained it as such, but it all went out the window upon meeting and changing the course of Daniel Sousa’s life. She’d been unprepared for the attraction she felt for him, but she’d played it cool, kept it nice and professional. Until Nathaniel Malick. She’d found herself clinging to the agent out of the past and knew that he’d also felt a kinship with her on his end.

“Daniel, would I be wrong in assuming that we’ve grown closer over the past few days? I mean, we have,” or at least she thought they had, “haven’t we?” Daisy Johnson asked, hoping to broach a subject that had crossed her mind more than once. They’d been on a first name basis since her ordeal at Malick’s hand. 

“I’d say that was a fair assessment,” Daniel Sousa conceded.

“Would you be terribly offended if I asked you about your personal life?”

Personal life? As in…romantic partners? He paused momentarily before shaking his head in negative. It would give him a chance to learn a bit more about her as well he supposed. While Agent Shaw appeared interested in Daisy as a fair bit more than friends, he knew that the regard wasn’t reciprocated.

“So, based on your file, I know you weren’t married when we pulled you out of your time,” that was about the extent of what she knew.

“Was there a question in there?” He challenged before backing down when she returned the question with a pointed stare. “I was not,” Daniel Sousa allowed. “I was engaged once, though,” he tacked on. “It uh, it obviously didn’t get past that.”

“Why?”

He smiled sadly as he thought the missed chance. He’d often wondered what his life would have been like had things not ended with them, particularly after Peggy had ended things. “Violet was a great gal. I could have pictured spending the rest of my life with her.” Which would have been true, had he not fallen so hard for Peggy Carter.

“Hence the proposal,” the Inhuman broke in.

He nodded. “When I met her, I was getting over someone. I knew I needed to move on and when I met Violet…I thought I had.”

“You never got over that _someone_ ,” Daisy broke in when he hesitated. She was beginning to put the pieces together. Given everything that she’d read in his file, his move from New York to California, after Peggy Carter had made the same move. Remembering his bitterness over not being able to say goodbye to someone…

Once again, he nodded. “Correct. When Violet figured it out, she ended things.”

“You’re in love with Peggy Carter.”

“Was,” he corrected promptly, “but, yes,” he finished quietly. “How did you guess that?”

She smirked at him. “You’re hardly the only office romance that SHIELD has seen.”

He’d seen the relationship Director Mackenzie shared with Agent Rodriguez, but he could only speculate what the other dynamics were amongst the team members. “Does that mean that you’ve dated a colleague?”

She shrugged. “Sort of,” she hedged, “it wasn’t quite dating though. I mean, there were feelings there…until there weren’t.”

When her voice took on a decidedly darker tone, he frowned. “Didn’t end well, I take it?”

“You could say that,” she smiled humorlessly. “Coulson was running a mobile command when I met him. Before I officially became a SHIELD agent, he’d been using me as a consultant. And because I was often in the field and didn’t have any training, he had me train under the operative on the team.”

“Oh, so not only a colleague, but your supervising officer,” he said in a teasing tone.

She smiled for him, but it quickly fell flat.

He was almost afraid to ask her about it after seeing her reaction. “You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t ready,” he cautioned her.

“It’s not like that,” she found herself denying. “I mean yes, it’s painful, but not for the reason you think it is.” She bit her bottom lip between her teeth before she continued on. “When you died in 1955, it was assumed that the Russians killed you. Hydra remained hidden in the shadows and grew and infiltrated not only SHIELD, but the government. They strategically took positions in power and…when they came out, it was a blood bath. Agents were given the option to either join Hydra or die.”

“Your SO…”

“Yeah,” she pursed her lips. “Turns out the man I fell for didn’t even exist. He was put on our team in effort to gather information about Coulson,” she pushed her hair behind her ears.

He thought back to the night they…she saved him, pulled him out of time. While they’d been speaking privately on the Zephyr, he’d been so focused on himself, on his losses. He’d never stopped to consider that she may have dealt with the same issue.

Not wanting to see the look of pity she was expecting, she decided to end on a happier note. “But I did eventually meet someone that was real and genuine and made me happy.”

So, she was already spoken for then? “You leave him behind to go traipsing through time?” He asked, hoping he sounded casual.

She smiled sadly, thinking about her altogether brief time with Lincoln Campbell. “No, he died…protecting me…taking the death that I assume was meant for me,” Daisy admitted softly. The mix of confusion and interest on his face was obvious, but she knew he was holding himself back from asking her about it. “I met an Inhuman that had the ability to show someone a death that would directly affect, whether it meant their own or not. And based on what I saw, I knew that someone on the team or I would die. It was my action that put the situation in motion…and you remember survivor’s guilt…” She pointed out, knowing that he understood the feeling she’d experienced after Lincoln’s death. Needing a lighter top of conversation, she turned the subject around on him once again. “What about you? You ever get a chance to act on those feelings you had?”

His relationship with Peggy had ended on a bitter note that he’d never gotten over. Between his position in California and hers in New York, their relationship never had a chance to really bloom. Their visits were few and far between and by New Year’s Eve in 1949, she’d ended things for good. He’d been completely heartbroken, and it had taken years before he could hear her name without an aching heart.

He considered begging off the question. However, he figured that since she’d opened up to him, she deserved the same courtesy. “We may have explored things on a romantic level.”

Watching him lose himself in a memory, she hesitated. The regard that he still held for Peggy Carter was obvious upon closer inspection and something told her that whatever happened between the former partners, he wasn’t the one to end it. “Was it not…what you thought it’d be?” She asked quietly.

“Her ex-boyfriend came back.”

Ex-boyfriend? After officially joining SHIELD, she’d been told to read up on SHIELD’s history, with Jemma suggesting she study up on Peggy Carter as well. Other than a brief and generic mention of Director Carter’s husband, the only lover that had ever been discussed had been… Ex-boyfriend… She maneuvered in her seat and sat forward. “As in Steve Rogers?”

He frowned. Did she know about him from the history of SHIELD and the SSR? He would have assumed that Stever Rogers, Dr. Erksine and the Super Soldier Program had faded into obscurity over the years. Why did she speak with such familiarity about him?

The confusion on his face had been answer enough for her. “You mean Captain America managed to travel back in time?”

“Travel back in time?” Peggy hadn’t given him the particulars when she’d ended their relationship, only to say that the man had returned, and she was sorry, but she wanted to be with Steve. Then again, if she had offered up an explanation, whose to say he would have even listened to it?

Ignoring her companion for the moment, she mused on the possibility that he’d time traveled. “Huh…” How had he managed to do such a thing? And when? She was sure that if Captain America disappeared, it would have made national news. Looking back at Daniel, she decided to get back to their conversation. “Yeah, uh…when he crashed the plane, he somehow ended up instantly freezing and it was pretty big deal when he woke up in 2011.”

“Right,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Of course, Rogers had. Because ever since 1955, his life could have been part of the anthology of Science Fiction Theatre…

She reached for one of his hands and squeezed it affectionately. Poor guy, he never stood a chance once Steve was back in the picture… “Her loss is some other lucky girl’s gain.”

He looked down at their joined hands before boldly meeting her gaze. “Anyone in particular?”

Her stomach did summersaults in response to the look behind his gaze. Feeling bold, she left her hand in his. “You tell me,” she replied, hoping that he recognized her interest in him. She wished she was braver; enough to make more of a move than that, but he’d been the first person she’d had any interest in since Lincoln’s death. She didn’t want to be cavalier and she didn’t want to risk alienating him in the off chance that she’d been wrong about their changing dynamic. “You don’t have to do anything about what I told you,” Daisy added, hoping he didn’t feel as if she’d put him on the spot. “With everything going on…” she trailed off in a sigh, thinking on her last conversation with Lincoln. “I know what it’s like to leave things left unsaid and in case things go awry, I don’t want to have any regrets.” Afraid of the potential awkwardness her actions could have caused, she stood up from her seat, wincing as she did so. “I better get to the healing chamber before Jemma comes looking for me.”

“Of course,” he agreed, standing up and taking a position next to her. He was still growing used to the prosthetic leg Dr. Simmons had provided for him and not moving as natural as he preferred. However, if Daisy noticed anything, she didn’t mention it.

She made her way towards the engine room where Jemma had moved the chamber. “You know, you don’t have to sit with me, if you don’t-”

“I like sitting with you,” he interrupted quickly before falling silent, afraid that he’d embarrassed himself.

A smile crept onto her face upon hearing his confession but didn’t respond. When they reached the door to the engine room, she turned to look him just before she passed under the threshold. “I like it when you sit with me too.”


End file.
